Behind the Campaign Curtain - Coming Events
Surprising and important lessons from the front lines of an Oregon State legislative race...
In the coming months I hope to post about lessons learned during my recent serious run for the Oregon State Senate. I recieved 41% of the vote—a result lower than I hoped for, even anticipated, but enough to add weight to the claim that we ran a robust campaign. Over nine months of campaigning I learned much that scandalized and discouraged—as well as much that inspired and energized.
My hope in sharing my behind-the-scenes view is that it will empower you, whoever you are, to pass on these ideas (or recommend the posts) to your social/community network. Together, we can better support good candidates, demand reasonable improvements from major endorsers, funders, and party leaders (I was both the Democratic and Independent Party candidate for my district)—and boost public trust in government.
Content: Campaign Facets & Issues
Here is an overview of some of the subjects that seem worthy of a forthcoming post.
Job description: Most people don’t know in a meaningful way what state legislators do. We’ll explore how they add value/impact our lives, how to stay informed about their doings, and how best to hold them accountable.
Ramping up: Pieces a campaign team needs to put in place…and quickly…to run a serious race. This includes finding key volunteers and/or staff (and being able to afford them), as well as running the numbers to generate a field plan, getting large sums of money, branding, and developing communication channels—all ASAP.
Power of the people: How candidates can make their case to voters via support from donors and volunteers….and the strong impact of a good ground game for “building the base”—whatever the outcome proves to be in the race.
Difficult secrets of Democratic endorsements: Winning organizational endorsements from labor unions, issue groups, and activist organizations is a long, detail-oriented process, which may or may not unlock vital funding.
Dirty secrets of Republican endorsements: Almost all business, agriculture, and law enforcement endorsements are given through a closed process that excludes Democratic candidates. It’s hard to show practical, big tent/bridge-building cred when the Republican candidate gets all these goodies in the voter pamphlet with little to no effort.
What it costs to run a campaign: Did you know each small donation may incur a $7 or $8 professional treasurer processing fee? Or how essential paid staff is to mount a serious campaign, and how much they should fairly be paid? Or that only 1% of Americans donate to local political campaigns? We’ll discuss what a campaign (needs to) spend money on, which may assist with evaluating whether campaign finance reform measures will allow candidates to still run effective, informative campaigns.
Meeting voters: The urgency, challenges, and satisfactions of in-person canvassing and call banking. To represent one’s constituency, one must understand them…and show you care.
Secrets of Democratic Party leadership control: There is big money in state legislative campaigns, much of it coordinated by intermediate groups serving the State’s House and Senate Democrats (same with the Republicans, though I lack first-hand knowledge there). Which candidates get what and why—and who decides—are processes both opaque and sometimes arguably unfair.
Peril and promise in public speaking: County Democratic Party picnics, radio shows, high-stakes newspaper endorsement interviews, speeches at fundraising house parties, and Chamber of Commerce candidate forums… The variety of venues and topics on which a candidate is expected to expound are vast and weighty.
Better know an electoral district: Stephen Colbert had a recurring segment in the Colbert Report called “Better Know a District” in which he spoke with a member of Congress. In a parallel and less tongue-in-cheek process at state level, leading citizens, business owners, activists, elected officials, chiefs of police, school district administrators, and more—all of these people are worth getting to know and listen to—for each community in the district a candidate seeks to represent.
Becoming policy literate: Briefings by advocacy organizations, completing those long and policy-dense endorsement questionnaires, reviewing prior legislation, and reading widely—these are good routes to deeper knowledge. Legislators (and by extension candidates) are or should be generalists, with deep benches of knowledge in numerous fields, and a commitment to learning that shows both humility and deep curiosity.
Adding value in a time of urgent change: The path to elected office is often via increasingly more responsible volunteer and elected offices. A volunteer Planning Committee member might be elected to the City Council, then be elected (or appointed—a typical Republican strategy) as a State Representative, then later be elected a State Senator—a path of many years, with the candidate perhaps having only a narrow band of professional and personal experiences. Might voters expand the paradigm to accept the value of candidates without legislative experience, but with broad and deep skill sets and habits of mind suited to this time of urgent change—e.g. climate change leadership, fostering community resilience, and/or deep economic understanding? Asking for a friend.
Fitting in a day job (or family, and/or other elected service): Knowing how much of a life beyond campaigning a candidate is juggling can build voter/supporter empathy, highlight equity issues (are independently wealthy candidates who need not work necessarily the best representatives of mostly lower- to middle-income working people?), and boost advocacy for better candidate support re access to staffers, training, and campaign funding.
Size of the district, too, impacts how much time a candidate must devote to travel vs. the work of campaigning: canvassing, filling out long endorsement applications, making fundraising calls, and appearing at public events.
Joining the network: How a candidate builds relationships across the state (and maybe nation) with party leaders, electeds, and other candidates.
Process
Underlying each of these campaign to-do’s and urgencies lies the how. How will the candidate deal with…
An impossibly full roster of tasks, all of which are important, but not all of which can be done perfectly, if at all;
Funding this grand adventure, since candidates cannot be paid by their campaigns, yet living expenses continue apace;
Ordinary misunderstandings, dropped balls, and work-style frictions within the campaign leadership team—on whom the candidate depends;
Discouragement from mistakes inherent in learning (often made publicly, with immediate palm to forehead recognition…but it’s too late now!);
Periodic stinginess, airy dismissal of the importance of elections, mean-spiritedness, and/or sometimes intentionally dehumanizing refusal to try to understand on the part of voters, loyalists on the other side, and—most painfully—from activists/leaders on one’s own;
Rising to as many opportunities as possible to share a word of hope or encouragement with members of the public, issue advocates, party supporters, possible funders, and other political leaders;
And recognizing the limitations in human knowledge, wise action, goodwill, and personal impact in the face of truly tragic predicaments—ecological, socioeconomic, public health-related, and more—which the process of policy study and voter engagement brings into sharp focus.
The paradoxical upside of campaigning is its privilege (it is one, indeed) to wrestle with weighty matters, and to seek to serve all constituents, ideally, and the lands and communities a candidate loves.